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The End of the World as We Know It? I'm fine.


By Chad Williams


Chad Williams performing at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan. Photo: Lauren Khalfayan


I 10


t’s the end of the world of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. I am an ultracompetitive artist. I want the most gigs, the best-looking puppets, perfection in technique. I want it ALL (and my therapist says there’s nothing wrong with that). So when the world came crashing down in March, when we performed our very last show in front of an audience in a Bronx project school on a Thursday, I was extremely upset. Everything that I had worked so hard to achieve was just gone. All of our spring gigs vanished, our income was nonexistent, and there was nothing I could do about it. Our three employees, who relied on gigs from us to pay their rent, would also be summarily screwed. I felt powerless and deflated. The next day, I got up, did my morning routine, and made a plan. It was Friday the 13th, and even though we were naive about the horror of what would come next (20,000 dead in NYC), my focus became “how can we transition to online shows?” I was obsessed with clawing back every single cancelled gig by turning our puppet company into the greatest streaming puppet show online. Did we get any of those gigs back? A couple. Did the motivation to get there have several unexpected positive side effects? Oh, hell yes. I have a BFA in multimedia; I have shot films, worked on TV shows, and had a career as a freelance A/V person for years before I became a puppeteer. That knowledge, along with a bunch of unused cameras and lights in our tiny Queens apartment, em- powered me to “pivot” our business into streaming. I am also 39 years young with an acute knowledge of streamers and streaming culture—that helped tremendously as I now aspired to BE one of them. I think the biggest mistake a lot of my friends are making is freezing in place, saying they are “old” and not following what


young people are doing. Well, that and walking their dog without wearing a mask. If you look at our earliest attempt to stream a puppet show, and then look at the one we released this week, it’s night and day. It took months of baby steps, learning one new thing each day, struggling with brutally hard concepts every week and making plenty of mistakes to get to where we are now—one of the recognized leaders in our field. There are puppeteers who have been doing this long before the pandemic, but since they don’t stream full-length shows as part of their streaming schedule, we had to create our own plan for how to get paid. PPP loans and government as- sistance were a flat-out joke, a rigged game with false hope; so, we relied on donations, merch, and small services to continue to support our employees.


I started to get looped into email threads about streaming puppet slams where I gave


tech advice based on the few streaming gigs we had done. We peaked at 7 paid streaming shows in one week, and I turned that experience into a streaming workshop for puppeteers. Heather Henson and IBEX gave me a platform, and I began to teach other puppeteers the very basics while also fielding highly technical questions. My goal was no longer just to perform again (a great feeling) but also to help our fellow puppeteers up onto the same level in this brave new streaming world. “A rising tide lifts all boats.” So, it’s been a few months now, and my goals have changed. My ultracompetitive side is taking a nap and chilling out. I still work hard every single day to be the best streamer I can be, to con- tinue to learn and help others, but the fire in my belly to “get the most gigs” is gone. Replacing it is the contentment of strength, knowing that everything we have accomplished since the quar- antine began will only serve to make us even greater when we can resume normal shows in the future. When will that be? Who knows? Until that shining day when we can easily walk into a performance space, a school, library, or park to perform for eager audiences, we will continue to stream online. Families out there need us, and they need you too.


Chad Williams and Lindsey ‘Z’ Briggs are the founders and co-artistic directors of WonderSpark Puppets. Jenny Hann, Christina Rodriguez and Julia Dadren also work with WonderSpark. From mid-March to the start of June, WonderSpark has posted 75 DYI (do-it-yourself) puppet-making workshops, 10 “parent puppet podcasts,” and a puppet show each Friday at 11 a.m. Find them at https://www.wondersparkpuppets.com/


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